Standard Deviation
by Spyridona
Summary: One child is saved. Another child comes to Candlekeep. One is never received. AU-BG2. Fem PC / Sarevok.


Disclaimer; Baldur's Gate and it's concepts and characters are owned by Black Island or EA or whomever owns the copyrights by now.

Notes - This is incredibly selfish of me, but I wanted to see if this was any good before I continued this story. I started this story in BG2 because I have more mapped out for BG2's portion of the Bhaalspawn trilogy for my story. BG1 stuff will be getting flash backs, when so much has diverged from BG1.

* * *

It throbs and ebbs, *this* arduous existence.

There was a time before such an existence, though she tries not to dwell on them because it makes the 'now' unbearable. She's quite forgotten how long its has been, too long to be recent but too many memories tell her it hasn't been that long. The only thing she knows to gauge the hours is when the pain doesn't stop until her nerves are numb. She is healed, leaving her cold and dry, almost naked to the soul and air, then she is left alone. Little to touch, nothing to see, nothing to hear, locked in darkness and metal.

When she is with the mage, she knows it's the time for agony. The only true voice she hears belongs to him. The voice is mellifluous, the only true word describe it. Refined and cyclic, his voice is simply musical. There's an echo of something once living, perhaps hidden in the vowels, but the voice is dead. No spirit, no life; his voice is the sound of nihilism set to a melody.

He is lithe and corded, his flesh porcelain pale and she sees the spidery veins down his arms and biceps. His face is a paradox, it lives and breathes, his mouth moves and his lips twist, his pale, frightfully blue eyes shift in sunken sockets. But ridges mark his brow, marring and mutating his features while his skin has sheen that doesn't seem quite real. He's corruption and decay; he matches his world well.

There are metal walls weaved with rust and age while the stone floors are covered with ichors that would cover her feet as she lumbered drugged steps behind her captor. Yet his tools, so finely made, so nimble, shine so brightly immaculate against the rusty walls and shadowed darkness of her mind. They're clean, flawless, when he takes them from an elegant maple box. They're clean when he places them back into the elegant maple box. However she is covered and dirtied by her own blood.

She understands there is no sadism in his actions, they're much too clinical and his cold eyes remain disinterested as the tools run over her body. The kiss of the blade is as cold as ice, the flesh tearing and liquid running down her body and broken bones are simply variables in an experiment.

Though are the smells. Organs rotting and the sickenly sweet smell of arsenic based embalming. While she is pain, she doesn't notice the smell but it overwhelms her senses when the pain is taken away.

The time when pain is gone is easy to describe, it is simply nothing but a cold metal floor and darkness. She knows there's someone beyond the bars but as far as she sees, it's darkness. There's water and there's bread but she's lost track how much she's been given. Even the healing she receives when he is done leaves behind nothing, erasing everything he has done besides the dried blood.

Somehow that hurts. Of everything he's done, the healing hurts the most.

This time, however, he leaves her without healing. However there was scarce difference between being aware and unconsciousness.

* * *

The door opened slowly and for a moment the halfling lass and aged dwarf just simply stared at the heap that could once be described as a human girl. She wasn't tall for a human; now thin though her torso had once been hard and lean with muscle. Her once pale hair was now soiled by blood and her skin was slowly turning blue. The human didn't stir save the rapid rise and decline of her chest. The halfing let out a muffled sob and took a step back, hitting the broad stomach of the dwarf behind her.

Alora breathed out a sigh that came from the depths of her toes before she stepped aside for the dwarf who rushed to the human. The sweet plumpness of her face had thinned during the long month of scraps of bread, dried fruit, and water, giving the halfing's appearance a haunted and aged look. Her dark hair was tangled and ratty and her once vibrant eyes were dull now as she watched Yeslick study Nadora.

Not that the dwarf looked all the better. His expression was grave and heightened the aged wrinkles along his eyes and the line between his brows. His cream and silver beard were also in tangles and knots and he appeared far too thin for a dwarf. Yet his old face was stern and determined.

"By Lady Truesilver," The dwarf groaned as he knelt by the girl, "The she better be alive, or I be wastin' my knees for nothin'." He frowned as he touched the girl's skin and bent over to study her breathing. "Huh, the leather clad-bastard pulled a nasty trick on her..." He mumbled though he spoke more to himself than to Alora.

"But she's breathing, right?" The halfling's voice was plaintive as she began to wring her hands and creped behind the cleric "I mean, I can see it! She'll be okay, right?"

"'Dora ain't breathing right and she feels like death." Yeslick paused, his voice dropped lowly, a soft whisper that carried only to Alora's ears as he gently pulled Nadora's upper eye lid and studied her eye while pulling down the lower lid with his thumb. "Her eyes ain't right, neither."

"I don't see why you're whispering." Alora said glumly, perhaps an attempt to distract herself from the troubling situation. The dwarf did not respond as he began chanting in a tongue as old as the earth and rough as sandstone.

Not deterred in the least the halfling continued while she began to pace behind the dwarf. "It's not like Sarevok's got elf ears, y'know," Her voice grew with brightness and slight irritation as her bare feet caused the metal planked floor to make a 'tank-tank-tank' sound. "If he was *really* worried about Nadora he wouldn't have run off looking for weapons an' stuff instead of sending us-"

"Whom I believed," A deep voice said behind and over Alora's head, "Would have more skills essential to saving her than I." The halfling's spun around hand on her throat and eyes wide to see Sarevok looking down at her, his expression sour with disdain.

He had grown a months worth of a beard and his dark hair, though shorter than the others, had knotted and matted with dried blood. His angular face and long torso had thinned in the month they had been captured, though much of his muscle still remained. He loomed considerably over the small halfing, and his amber eyes narrowed faintly at Alora who finally breathed out. "I... I guess you're right on that but..." Alora trailed off, her gaze focused on the dwarf. Sarevok's gaze soon followed as they watched the dwarf slowly wipe his face and the chant died on his lips.

"Orothiar?"

"She got hit by one of them missiles. Straight in the chest near the lungs, but it didn't break the skin. She's hurt real bad inside, blunt trauma." The dwarf muttered as he began to stretch out the human girl's legs. He glanced up in time to see the barest frown across Sarevok's mouth as he studied Nadora, the human male's full lips pressed hard together and his brows furrowed and darkened. "Called upon the blessing o' the Twin Axe, give her a bit more o' a chance,"

Sarevok took a step back, the faint jingle of the armor that he hastily donned echoed in the tinned wall room. "Alora," He dropped pieces of leather armor onto the ground that rang against the metal floor with a dull 'bing'. "There is a painting on the right side of the room I just came from to your right. I'd advise you to make use of your skills and be an asset."

Alora screwed up her face and began to open her mouth in protest. Another glare of the Bhaalspawn's amber glow eyes and the ashen color under his usually bronze skin made the little thief hold her tongue and listen to Sarevok's advice. She padded quietly out of the room and left the armor on the floor.

* * *

The younger man watched the dwarf lift his scarred and pale arms to the heavens, his posture abashed with his head lowered and eyes focused on the slip of a woman. Yeslick's voice, rough-dry and warm rumbly, was reverential as he called out to his gods to save his comrade. The divine energy coursing through his body rolled off from the dwarf in waves, soft and comfortable.

Despite the pleasant emotions, Sarevok did not much care for it's effects, softening the razor of his edge to allow distractions and weakness. As his brain clouded with cloying peace, the tall human shook his head to clear the miasma and his gaze fell to Nadora. Coldness chilled him to his soul as he realized the young woman's skin was still a sickly blue. It constricted his lungs and, he cared not to name the emotion.

Fear, even as a youth, had always been a waste for him, an emotion that threatened to drag him to mediocrity. Shadows of what it could feel like, what it was like, haunted his dreams. Yet, he had never felt fear for himself. Not since he was a child in the nameless years before Gorion had found him lurking in the shadows of the outer courtyard of Candlekeep. He would not name emotion he felt though it made his arms feel heavy and his stomach churn.

Sarevok wasn't certain if the emotion was for her or for himself. After all she was his last connection to his old life. Memories of a content adolescence with the stubborn, quiet blond at his side had been persistent during his objectively short adulthood and had kept him grounded to his faith. Newer memories had kept him sane for the past month. Nadora was the link between new his life and his old, the angry youth he was and the fledgling divine of now.

Her loss would be the death of an entire existence.

The dwarf began to chant again, a third prayer to his gods. Or perhaps a failure of the second, Sarevok idly thought, his face slipping from the stoic planes of patience to dark lines of anger. The splint armor and chain mail he wore crinkled as he shifted on his feet, a habit that was fading with some effort, but he never could seem to banish his irritation at lack of activity.

Saverok watched as a faint glow surrounded the form of both the dwarf and human and the voice that echoed from Yeslick lapsed and faded. His arms dropped once again and groggily the dwarf stood up. Sarevok let out a short, impatient snort. "Did your gods have prior engagements, Othanair?"

The dwarf wiped his brow with the tail of his beard and shook his head stiffly. Yeslick barely had stepped out of the cage to allow Sarevok room before the big man was kneeling next to the short woman. Her skin was no longer sickly blue, but now pallor and the rise and fall of her chest was steady and even. Sarevok's large hand, strikingly dark against Nadora's skin, swept away loose strains of her hair to feel the flesh was now warm. "What took them?" Sarevok demanded, looking over his shoulder, his gaze burning brightly at the dwarf.

Yeslick flinched at the young human, despite months of acquaintance, the inhuman glow of the human's eyes seemed to trouble him. "They're always here, Krugar, always. Jus' this time I had to ..." Yeslick paused, "Convince 'em it was all right."

Sarevok slowly stood up again turning his gaze away from the dwarf to stare ahead, eyes narrowed slightly and the honey light dimmed. "You have healed her before, many times. Why is it different now? It is not as if you were healing the Thyavian or I."

"Son, not now. I didn't question, but begged. Curiosity could have killed her. I don't doubt Mordian's wisdom and Clangeddin's might." Yeslick's brows were knotted down and his eyes down cast. "Though, I wouldn't worry about it fer now. I'd wager that the leather clad bas-"

Sarevok turned his head sharply at the dwarf and his eyes flared gold as he raised himself up "There is something you're neglecting to tell me, old man?"

The dwarf lifted his head, "She's alive. There's nothin' to talk about now-"

"What time is it?" Came the soft croak that deterred the argument.

* * *

Nadora had propped herself on her elbow and studied the two men with unfocused eyes and a crooked frown. She wasn't quite sure what she was looking at but motion and a squat shadow and a tall broad shouldered one. The shadows had been talking but their words were a blur of noises, of age and vigor, anger and exhaustion, though she couldn't quite make out what the words were. When the blur faded she used her voice and scowled at the croak.

The large shadow knelt down to the ground and she felt a warm hand cup her cheek and his dark rumble of a voice brought her closer to reality and her vision cleared. "You and your damnable luck with mages," This voice belonged to the voice of vigor, deep and coarse, yet warm and affectionate. The glow amber of his eyes comforted her. "How do you feel?"

"Hurts." She said and smiled at his faintly puzzled look, a slightest twitch at the corners of his mouth. It was so hard to read Sarevok's face now that his eyes glowed almost constantly. Nadora sighed and slowly began to sit up. "What's wrong?"

"You were healed, though it took some considerable time," The human rumbled with concern, his hand cupped her cheek and gave a single caress, the callus on his upper palm rough and pleasant against her skin. "But you were healed."

Sarevok's expression became cloudier at her faint expression of confusion and she turned her eyes away from his, she pulled away from the intimate touch to try and stand. She hadn't felt a pain like this before. Her bones ached from the marrow and felt as if they had shred the muscles into the scraps and her brain had been cut into ribbons and sewn together again.

She listened to Sarevok leaving the cage as she pulled herself up by the bars of her cage, peering at the cells and silvery torture equipment lined upon the rusty walls. Her lips pressed together and her arms shook with the effort. "It was dark out there." She murmured quietly, waiting for her legs to stop shaking. She glanced over her shoulder at the two men and heard the faint squeak of a door opening. "I couldn't see past the bars and I couldn't hear..."

"Magic," Sarevok commented. "I experienced the same until Yeslick had dispelled the illusion from me." He glanced at the dwarf to address him. "Apparently our host did not give the same courtesy to Alora or you, as I understand."

"You speak as if we were living in luxury, boy." Yeslick mumbled, holding his hand to his temple, his shoulders slumped. He shot his head up and glared at the sudden 'tank-tank-tank' pattering across the suspended floor. "Alora, you're supposed to be a thief!" He bristled at the halfing.

The young woman cheerfully ignored the dwarf's scolding and sailed past Sarevok to hug Nadora tightly about the waist, her face buried in the blonde's stomach. The fact that the human woman nearly toppled over didn't bother the halfing at the least. "Told you!" She chortled at the two men, lifting her face to look at them and twisted her lips into a familiar bright smile. "Told you and I told you; she'd be okay!" Nadora smiled weakly and patted the halfling's shoulder.

"Don't feel so special, lass, she nearly knocked the wind out of me when she opened up my cage." Yeslick chuckled, lowering his body to the ground. Sarevok gave the dwarf a look of irritation, Nadora noticed, though she couldn't comprehend why. There were bags under the old man's eyes and his skin was sweaty from exertion.

"I suppose we're getting Garrick next?" Nadora asked, pointedly, trying to catch the bronze skinned man's attention. A soft suck of air and sharp little breath caught her's, however, and she looked down at her friend.

Alora looked up at Nadora with violet eyes dark with sorrow. "We... we can't find him. Anywhere."


End file.
